


We Shall Be Changed

by t0talcha0s



Category: BioShock
Genre: Blood, Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen, Gore, Most of the Bioshock cast is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:02:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5693992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Wales brothers designed Rapture, Bill McDonagh made Rapture, but Brigid Tenenbaum embodied Rapture, she <em> was </em> Rapture, and she will make sure no one else has to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Shall Be Changed

**Author's Note:**

> For irony I chose a title from a Bible verse: 1 Corinthians 15:52 - In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, _and we shall be changed._

The year is 1948, the newly glittering Rapture stands triumphant and startlingly dry beneath the twisting ocean. In this Atlantis knockoff stands Apollo Square, with towering grandiose walls and Art Deco trimmings. Canned music plays over the speakers, the anthem of the city, Rise Rapture Rise, ironic given the position of the city but patriotic nonetheless. A platform stands in the middle of the square, on it the most powerful man in Rapture, a great man, Andrew Ryan. Others stand on stage with him, Bill McDonagh, Diane McClintock and the like, but in the crowds surrounding the platform stands the soon-to-be most power woman in Rapture, Brigid Tenenbaum.

Brigid keeps to herself, she stands near the back of the crowds, leaning against a wall with a cigarette holder dangling from her lip. She looks out upon the spectacle with indifference, she isn't here because she was mesmerized by Ryan's charm and promises. 

"We need no gods or kings in Rapture! Only man! Here, man and woman will be rewarded with the sweat of their brows." Ryan speaks with iron-clad conviction, his words rattling off the walls of the square and alighting enthusiastic faces in the crowd. Some cheer, Brigid does not. The words he speaks are not the sentiments which drew Brigid to Rapture. She misses some of his words in the inhale of her cigarette, but she doesn't really care. "I have scientists here in Rapture working on new discoveries that will astound you" That, Brigid supposes, is why she's here. 

"It would be an honor to have you." The invitation had said when Brigid first received word of this underwater utopia. It was written on thick cardstock and printed in elegant lettering. It was luxurious, a luxury Brigid was neither impressed with nor cared for. There were informational pamphlets about the project but Brigid didn't much care for reading it all, she picked out bits and pieces of it. "The scientist will not be bound by petty morality." But Brigid never was. "A freedom from the war above." "A great chain of industry." The writer sounded like someone with a good case of red-phobia, and the whole place sounded like somewhere for people who wanted to survive to go. Rapture appeared as some elite bomb shelter. Brigid was intrigued however, she had little ties on the surface, was hated by those who recognized her as Das Wunderkind, though she was hardly a child anymore, and Brigid Tenenbaum decided she could use an escape. 

And escape she did, the warped reflections and twisting fish outside the magnificent windows of Rapture made it quite clear how far she had gone to escape. Brigid revels in the hopes that this new life will be promising, that she will be able to discover and innovate freely, because she was so damn close to cracking that genome, the fickle fucker. 

On stage Ryan has finished his speech and his place is filled by a dancing Sander Cohen. With his music escorting her Brigid turns and walks out of Apollo square. 

-

The year is 1948 and a Korean man stands suit clad and face stony in front of Brigid. He is a psychologist, a behavioral psychologist, Brigid has read some of his theses and dissertations. She had rolled her eyes at each of them. The mind is not the key, Brigid knows this, she knows it is genes. 

"Dr. Yi Suchong." His voice is heavily accented, his greeting cold. 

"Brigid Tenenbaum." Equally accented and cold, albeit differently. "It is good to finally be meeting you." She doesn't mean it, but it's about as polite as she'll be. There's a moment of silence in which they size each other up. Brigid isn't impressed with his slew of degrees and suit and Suchong isn't impressed by her reputation or ratty blue dress beneath a worn lab coat. 

"You are working for Sinclair?" Brigid almost wrinkles her nose at the question, no not Sinclair, she had been let go from her contract with Sinclair Solutions. The letting go had been a little ugly. 

"I am working for whoever provides the funds." Suchong smiles for a moment, not beautiful or caring but understanding, the smile of a man who knew what it was like to do what it takes to survive and thrive. Despite their differences Brigid thinks they'll work just fine together. 

Rapture is full of survivors. 

-

The year is 1949 and Arcadia is in bloom. Brigid's never been impressed with trees, superficial and one-dimensional as all plants are, but Brigid is impressed with Julie Langford's ability to keep them alive leagues and leagues under the sea. Brigid walks briskly, obviously with no urge to stop and admire the green scenery beneath the blue waves. A man, no more then a boy really, stops in her path, facing her with a nervous expression on his face, barely a year into rapture and Brigid is well known, for several reasons, but this man doesn't seem to care.

"Excuse me m'am," he says, Brigid halts abruptly, as not to run into him, and raises an unimpressed eyebrow. "I couldn't help that you're more beautiful then the blooming roses." Oh, is that what this is about, well Brigid has no interest in that. "I was wondering if-" Brigid bluntly cuts him off, she has places to be and this charming little interaction is useless to her. 

"This thing you are trying to do, it is futile no?" The man's mouth hangs open incredulously, words hanging unsaid and heavy on his tongue. The expression reminds Brigid of one of the stinking trouts down on the wharfs, where disgusting men howl at her and she can send away their advances with a mere glare. "So then move aside, I have places to be going, now it is not the time for such fruitless interactions." The man's mouth closes in a flinch. He steps aside sheepishly, wordless and cheeks flaming in humiliation, anger, and shame. Ah well, he'll survive the rejection. Brigid tosses out a cursory, "thank you." for his sake, and picks up her rushed pace. Honestly, "Brigid Tenenbaum" is not an uncommon name in daily conversations around Rapture; the man should have known who he was speaking to and how it would play out before he approached her. It's his fault for being so foolish, and now Brigid fears she'll be late, she pulls a cigarette and cigarette holder out of her pocket, she needs a smoke. 

The laboratory of Julie Langford is in disarray, organized chaos of Petri dishes, samples, notes, solutions, plants, anything Julie could need. Brigid likes Julie's company, so much as she can anyway. They have their similarities, their hands previously in the mess that was World War II, an interest in genetics, the only two women called to Rapture for uncensored scientific research, but Brigid could just never take an interest in the genetics of plants when the human genome is so close to being unravelled yet still remains an unreadable blueprint. 

"Brigid," Julie says, she's stirring a beaker, a bright liquid sloshing against the sides. Brigid sets down her cigarette holder, the cigarette finished and her neves somewhat calmed. "Come in, I'm almost finished, I think I've found it." Julie's voice is bright and very American, a bit abrasive but charming in its own way nonetheless. Brigid recognizes the beaker in her hand as containing the newest attempt at the Lazarus Vector, a solution which would revive dead plant matter, interesting but a rough work in progress. 

"What is it you have done differently this time?" Brigid says, walking forward with avid interest, Julie's experiments, while she considers them lesser then her own, are still wildly fascinating. 

"Bee spit, baby." She says excitedly. Brigid isn't phased by the moniker, Julie uses a range of names for whoever she's around depending on her mood. Baby was a good sign, an excited sign. "Will you bring me that ficus." She jerks her head in the direction of one of the many plants in her office, both alive and dead. The ficus is dead, brown and starting to rot, its leaves litter the floor. 

"You think this bee spit is the solution?" Brigid grabs the plant, giving a quick sneer at the smell and placing it in front of the enthusiastic Dr. Langford. 

"It very well might be. Though god knows how high Tasha will jack the prices if it is the key." Julie had spoken of her feud with Tasha Denu, owner of Silverwing Apiary, in the past. Brigid remembers something along the lines of _"that damn beekeeping bitch threatened my life over that enzyme, I'll show her."_ growled while bent over a microscope. "Though I heard I'm not the only one with problems with work partners, you've got a partner Brigid?" 

"Suchong," Brigid starts, pausing to think how to best describe him. "Suchong is a psychologist. It is hard to speak positive of him, he does not know much, he thinks he can learn all that it is that I know." Julie laughs.

"Yeah like he'd surpass you." Julie finally stops stirring the concoction, looking proudly at it. "Like you'd let him." She pulls the ficus closer, unceremoniously dumping the mixture into a spray bottle and spritzing the dead plant. Both women stare at the plant intently, but all that happens is the breaking off of a leaf which slowly flutters to the ground. "Goddamnit." A pause. "Perhaps some distilled water..." 

-

The year is 1950 and the wharf stinks of dead fish. Brigid is out of money, out of work, and out of ideas. She's out of touch with her thriving peers, Steinman's business is booming, he has a wait-list the size of a lengthy, published novel, Julie's gotten closer and closer to the Lazarus Vector and has been able to make her trees more efficient oxygen creators, and even the damn hack Cohen has been able to take over the art scene, tickets for his shows are highly sought after. There's even the newly arrived Dr. Sofia Lamb, called down to Rapture by Andrew Ryan his damn self, and she's a fucking _psychologist._ Brigid feels left in the dust and mainly aggravated, she needs a revelation. 

Her eyes scan over the dock workers, admiring the differences between them. She knows why the broad shouldered worker is taller then the balding one next to him, she could trace their identity, their body, their very soul through their genes. 

Well, not now she can't, not with no lab, and no money, and no support. But she knows she'll be able to, she's been through worse. 

Usually Brigid doesn't care to spend much, or any, time at all in Neptune's Bounty and today is no different. Her mind is occupied as she walks briskly atop the planks of the wharf, a flurry of thoughts, but her instincts are keen enough to have her duck as a tennis ball comes hurtling towards her head. 

"Watch where you're going lady!" Comes a gruff voice behind her and she spins sharply on her heel to face him, trademark glare sharp in her eyes. He flinches away, obviously recognizing her, little does he know she recognizes him as well. His fingers flex dexterous and fully functioning around the tennis ball, which startles Brigid as she knew that hand had been crippled a week ago when she was about the wharf last. 

"Your hand" 

"What of it?" The mans voice is hard and unfriendly but Brigid's used to it. 

"It was crippled was it not?" What could erase, unwrite such a debilitating injury? Brigid needs to know, needs to get her hands on it, her voice comes out more desperate and rapid then she'd like. 

"I couldn't use it yeah, 'fore a damn slug bit me a couple'a days ago."

"Do you have the slug?" Excitement speeds her heart, her glare long gone from her invested eyes. 

"Yeah, tossed it in a bucket. Figured one a you science types would be interested." Brigid reaches into her purse, pulls out her, mostly empty, wallet. 

"Ten dollars?" 

"Sure." 

"Hold any more of those slugs you find, I shall be around to be buying more." He grins. 

"Deal." 

\- 

The year is 1951 and Brigid's discovery blows her mind every day. She and Suchong stand in front of the groaning wreck of the man on the table. His left arm is shredded and twisted behind him, his left side is covered in heavy burns, and his eye is swollen shut, but to Brigid he's a canvas. These three are not alone however, the scourge of Rapture, as Andrew Ryan would like him to be known, stands watch as a potential investor. 

Frank Fontaine is not a small man, not in stature nor presence and he looks over them like a Titan. It's well known that he's a smuggler but he's evaded all claims through lack of evidence and a little bribery. Tenenbaum hopes he'll slide a little of his extra money money her way. 

"So what is it you've found doc?" Fontaine smiles at Brigid, in a way that makes her want to punch him, but she's not a renowned fighter. 

"Tenenbaum holds no doctorates." Suchong says matter-of-fact and indignant. 

"But I do hold the key to rewriting the human genome." She reaches a hand towards Suchong, who hands her a syringe filled with bright, almost glowing, red. "This man you see, he is obviously never going to use the left side of his body again." The man on the table voice his protests in an pathetic moan. "That is until I discovered ADAM." She gestures to the syringe, unceremoniously stabbing the lengthy needle into the man. He jerks. moans, and his veins began to glow faintly. But slowly, the swelling begins to go down, the burns lighten and dissipate, and the cuts close back up, much to Fontaine's astonishment. 

"And you're saying we can market this." 

"It can rewrite anyone's genetic code, it is very marketable." She doesn't care about marketing though, she's just in it for the  
research money. Fontaine doesn't say anything or a while, thinking for a bit. 

"I think the three of us can work out a deal." Brigid smiles. 

"This you will not regret." 

-

The year is 1952 and Brigid is awkwardly situated next to Sander Cohen. Ryan had gathered together what he considers "Raptures best and brightest" for a commemorative photograph after four years of innovation. The crowd consists of Ryan himself, Steinman, Cohen, Lamb, Suchong, and Brigid. Brigid stands petite next to the others, and only goes up to Lamb's jaw, but her presence is stronger then anyone in the picture. Word of ADAM had carried, and everyone wants to get their hands on it, not that Brigid would, in good health, give it to them. The feuds within the scientific community don't come out in the sepia of the photograph, Cohen and Steinman are friends, but everyone but Ryan thinks they're insane, Lamb has been accumulating political power and has even had debates with Ryan, which ended disastrously, Brigid's surprised she's here, Suchong, she thinks, doesn't belong in the "best and brightest" category, and none of them think fondly of her at all. 

None of them smile in the photograph, it comes out tense and awkward, and Julie Langford laughs hysterically at it when Brigid and she are sitting down together for lunch. 

"I should frame this." She says, fending off the remaining chuckles, Brigid knows she would have liked to be in the picture herself, but her progress on the Lazarus Vector has halted. "He invited _Lamb_ how tense was that?" 

"The two of them are no better then bickering children, this petty competition for power is useless to all parties involved." 

"And there'll be a third party involved if the folks at Fontaine's poor house start getting restless." Brigid chuckles, little mirth and mainly scorn. 

"Fontaine, he can be charismatic when he so chooses, but he is distasteful in the eye of the elite." 

"In the eyes of us elite huh?" Brigid chuckles earnestly now. 

"Rapture's best and brightest"

-

The year is 1953 and Brigid is elated. She stands, again, in a lab with Fontaine, Suchong, and a specimen in front of them. Finally she has figured how to make ADAM function perfectly, well, with minimal side effects at least. 

"You call them what?" Fontaine asks again, money in his gaze. 

"Plasmids. They do many things, grow hair, create muscle, boost intelligence, even allow user to control electricity." Suchong says, Brigid doesn't like his voice, it grates on her nerves, not to mention Suchong fancies himself a geneticist now, Brigid scoffs at the thought. "They are the paint to ADAM's canvas." 

"The man you see in front of you, he is injected with Electro-bolt, he needs just a shot of EVE." Brigid doesn't think she can listen to another droning monologue about the glory of plasmids, which she perfected in the first place. Besides, she doesn't want to draw out this presentation, instead she promptly shoves a needle into the man's arm, lowering the plunger and watching his veins glow and the air around him crackle. He screams, but remains unharmed as he witnesses electricity shoot from his palm, overloading the lightbulb in the lamp illuminating the room. "We should have insulated the lightbulb." She mumbles. 

"The user remains completely. Unharmed and may even master the control of his electricity." Fontaine's mouth widened into a con-man's grin. 

"The two of you are the wonders of Fontaine Futuristics, you're gonna make me rich." 

-

The year is 1955 and the Little Sister's Orphanage and Little Wonders Educational Facilities are making tremendous progress. The slugs take well to the children and the children don't seem to mind, though their eyes run yellow and the red in their stomach makes it so they can't easily be injured. the children put Brigid on edge, especially when they _look_ at her. 

"They are weak." Suchong says, prodding at one of the girls on the dissection table. 

"They heal." Brigid responds, cutting through the girls arms, taking muscle samples. The ADAM infused flesh has a different cell makeup then normal cells, she wants to stabilize it. 

"Not if the sea slug is removed, they need protection." 

"They need to be perfected before we think of such things." 

"They're the best they'll get, Suchong is certain they need protectors to function optimally." 

"And what does Suchong know? You are psychologist, not geneticist." Brigid snaps, carefully placing a sample taken into a prepared Petri dish. 

"Suchong is _biologist."_

"Since when?" Suchong fumes, tension palpable in the air. He turns and walks away from the form of Brigid bent over the child. 

"Fontaine will agree with Suchong." Brigid smiles a little to herself at that, if only Suchong knew. 

-

The year is 1956 and Rapture's gone to shit. Brigid blames herself a little when Julie talks about,

"The Saturnine, nothing but an aging bunch of frat boys, tilting back goblets of Plasmids and calling it ambrosia. Hah, it's pathetic." Without ADAM this entire civil war would be far less bloody, spliced up lunatics roam the streets without care, some even clamoring their way up the walls. The streets of Rapture are volatile and dangerous, Brigid had even been urged to take a bodyguard with her to visit Julie in Arcadia, due to the dangerous cult abusing her creation. She had refused, she does not need one. 

"They're causing trouble for you, yes?" 

"They're causing me hell like you wouldn't believe, Bridg." The nickname was something Julie seems overwhelmingly proud to have come up with, Brigid doesn't see the use but supposes it's all in good fun. Julie did always like to tell her to _"Get that damn stick out of your ass, Brigid."_ "Damn fools broke into my lab yesterday and looted some of my chlorophyll solutions like they have any use for it." 

"And business with Tasha?" 

"Oh you would not believe what the bitch has done now," Brigid smiles and thinks she can. It's certainly can't be the worst in all of this. 

-

The year is 1957 and the tense partnership between Suchong and Tenenbaum is not yet extinguished. It has even, in fact, escalated with Fontaine's newest assignment. 

"I do not see why she was so difficult in giving us the embryo." Brigid grumbles, scalpel in hand as she examines the infant below her. He's been growing at an accelerated rate and Brigid just needs to check development progress, simple stuff, routine after all this time of both she and Suchong putting their all into this child. "She did not want it, but she wanted money, yet would not exchange it for money so easily." 

"Suchong does not understand either." He says, manning the projection behind the child, which shines images meant to "mentally condition" the child. That was all Suchong's doing. 

"With the rate he is growing he should be ready to deploy in less then a year." 

"Fontaine will be happy." 

"We will have our research grant."

-

The year is 1958 and Fontaine is dead. The news rocked Rapture to its core, the knowledge of Ryan's takeover and assassination not only outraging those who benefitted from Fontaine's poor houses but also those who truly believed in Ryan's initial ideals he has now blatantly betrayed. Some great chain and free market this is. Sofia Lamb rots and makes trouble in Persephone, rouge splicers are unstoppable, volatile, and unpredictable in their killing, and Little Sisters with their Big Daddies tromp around harvesting the corpses that line the street. 

Brigid works for Ryan now, she and Suchong developing more, better Big Daddies to take care of the increasing number of little sisters needed to keep up with ADAM demand. Ryan's started having young girls kidnapped from their family's clutches daily, the list of missing people photos that line the walls of Apollo Square grows. The girl Brigid works with now is named Mascha, but now she has a number, that's all she knows about her. 

"Mr. Bubbles, you're the best daddy!" Mascha, no, the Little Sister says as Brigid has the remote controlled suit reach it's hand out to her. The girl's eyes are empty and inhuman. The tattoo on Brigid's arm catches her attention, she rolls down the sleeves of her lab coat. 

-

The year is 1959 and nothing is simple anymore. Brigid's knuckles are bloody, she had punched a wall. Such aggression usually didn't fill her but her rage had been unmanageable. Now she doesn't even feel real, the pain, the cool blood on her fingers, she should feel it. She doesn't feel anything but anger, but shame and guilt, she has never felt this angry before. She might be mad, every definition of the word, she very well might be.

Why?

Why this guilt now? Why this fear of molten yellow eyes and ringing, childish voices? Why this need to protect? Why does she feel like she's finally done something wrong? Why can't she comprehend herself? Why can't she undo what she's done, all of it? Why couldn't she just have died like everyone else in those prison camps? 

What is happening to her? What is she? What can she do? What is the point of this, of her? What is this anger? What makes a monster? What makes a mother? What makes her? 

Her knuckles sting a little when she runs her cuts under water, it's a clarity she can only hope to sustain. She doesn't know what to do, doesn't know what's happened. She only knows, for the first time in her life, she won't be going into work tomorrow. Brigid decides to take a maternity leave. 

-

The year is 1960 and she knew she'd see him again. He's gotten so large, he's gotten so powerful. 

"Jack." The name graces her lips like a smile. He's saved her little ones. They had tried to crowd around him when she started working, started undoing what she had been paid to do only two-three years ago, but she shooed them away, told them the man who will save them all needs his rest. She has an incredible fondness for him in her gratitude, a different kind of softness then that she feels for her little ones, one akin to the pride of a discovery. The prodigal son returns, Fontaine's ace in the hole turned against him, she's very proud. 

She frowns at the spliced tissue lining his body, but she knows he couldn't have made it here without it, her creations intertwining to create a masterpiece, a Titan larger then Atlas. He'll carry the world now. She tells him of her thanks when she knows he won't remember. 

"Meine Dankbarkeit ist endlos." She knows even if somehow in his passed out state he remembers, he doesn't know German, it's too personal for her to reveal such weakness to him. She heals his wounds, places ammo by his bedside, prays to god for him, but there are no gods or kings in Rapture and Brigid had trouble believing many years ago. She knows he won't fail her, so she turns and leaves him to wake up on his own in her sewer-home. The children will be elated to see him up but she won't be able to face him. 

Julie is dead, as is Suchong, and Steinman, and Cohen, and Ryan. That leaves herself, Lamb, and Fontaine. She knows Rapture cannot fall if they all live. Luckily the boy, truly a boy really, below her has nothing stopping him now, no mental hindrance. 

"Go kill the bastard." She speaks to him before she leaves. She knows in this he will not fail, but she cannot shake the feeling that it won't be enough. 

-

The year is 1968 and it is everything Brigid feared. The newspaper she holds in her hands confirms her suspicions finally. 

"Third Girl Gone Missing From East Coast Beach." The headline reads, and the article goes on to describe how some had seen lights coming from the ocean, another innocent child abducted. 

Sofia fucking Lamb, Brigid curses the name, curses The Family, curses blue butterflies that litter her eyelids whenever she shuts her eyes. If only she had destroyed her back when she had the chance, but Rapture still comes for her eight years after she left and she has to finish what she started, she has to go back. 

Jack's vocal chords are ripped beyond repair, so he can't interrupt her when she tells him she has to go back to the city, but his eyes widen and he shakes his head vehemently. 

"Worry not my child," she says. Her bags are already packed, she trusts Jack and her little ones, now not-so-little ones, to take care of themselves, they cannot convince her not to go. "I know I may not return, yet this is a risk I must be taking. Tell my little ones not where I go, they will worry but they shouldn't have to remember." He shakes his head again, pleads with her to stay. "All good things in this world flow into the city, they said, but we made it nothing but hell. _I_ made it hell. You see then that I must go back, I must save them, I must finish what I started." Brigid is resolute in her need to go back, she cannot leave Lamb to her devices. Brigid made Rapture what it was, and she will undo it all she swears. Fallen fallen is Babylon but Rapture still stands, she cannot escape Rapture, but she is the parasite that can survive it, and Rapture is full of survivors.

**Author's Note:**

> This style was weird to write but I really just wanted an excuse to map out Tenenmom's journey through Rapture. 
> 
> I chose the title for irony Bc it's from a bible verse discussing the rapture, and bibles were outlawed and it was called Rapture so it's like triple ironic. 
> 
> EDIT: Yes I know it's Gilbert Alexander and not Steinamn in the 1952 photo but Gil didn't have much of a place in this fic so I replaced him with Steinman for better continuity within the confines of this piece. 
> 
> Hmu on tumblr at barefootcosplayer


End file.
